A new rule proposed by the Biden Administration would protect LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system by requiring adoption agencies to place them in homes that affirm their sexual orientations and gender identities. Republicans, however, have come out in opposition to the change.
This is the most important issue the republicans think they have to deal with. Trans and gay people / kids. Not kids being hungry, not schools shootings, not educations test scores or financing. Nope what bathroom a person can use and what medical treatment is available.
The republicans think they have a winning issue with their base because these are hate bills, socially regressive bills. But these are a driven minority fueled either by hate or driven by religious beliefs, possibly both. The majority rejects that hate, that bigotry, that demand to control how others live. These anti-trans bills mirror the anti-gay bills of the 1970s, and that mirrored the anti-race integration. It is all about resisting changes in society and inclusion of those who are different. It is about not progressing, instead wanting things to never change. But look at history, every generation advances society in some way, with causing more friction with the older generations, that forget they changed society of their elders also. Think of the bathroom bills and then think how white people did not want to share bathrooms or any place with black people. The bathroom bills trying to keep trans kids from public bathrooms and out of locker rooms is the same bullshit that I faced as a gay man, these same people wanted to keep me from using bathrooms, using locker rooms claiming gay men would sexually attack straight men. Sounds just like trans women would attack cis women. The bills about keep trans people out of sports are very like the racial segregated sports teams in the 1950, claiming first black people were inferior then also saying that black men would take over the sports winning over the whites. Does it all sound so familiar. It is the same hate, same bigotry, just repackaged to use against a new group for these people to hate.
Also these people just refuse to accept well known documented medical science / studies that show people are not made gay or trans, but born that way. You cannot force a straight person to be gay, and you can not force a gay person to be straight. Also while these bills forbid any mention of a non-cisgender or non-straight orientation, that requires the forced reinforcement of cis heterosexuality. Hugs. Scottie
The state is considering 41 other bills attacking transgender rights this year.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot
Lawmakers in both the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate debated a total of eight anti-transgender bills in a single day this week.
The measures, affecting trans people’s ability to access healthcare, bathrooms, and other facilities, and legal recognition of their gender identity, represent just a fraction of the 49 anti-trans bills Missouri Republicans have already introduced this month. Trans journalist Erin Reed described the latest wave of proposed laws as “a firehose of legislation that touches every aspect of trans people’s lives.”
State law allows the university to provide gender-affirming care, but it still refuses to do so.
On Wednesday, Missouri’s Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee heard testimony on S.B. 728, one of two bills, which would establish a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in the state. Among other provisions affecting school curriculum, S.B. 728 “prohibits public school officials from encouraging a student under the age of eighteen years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation.” It also requires school officials to “inform a student’s parent within twenty-four hours if the student expresses confusion about their documented identity or requests to use personal pronouns that differ from their documented identity” and to “obtain written parental consent before allowing a student to use a name other than the name provided by the parent when registering the student for school and before encouraging a student to wear certain items of clothing.”
Effectively, the bill requires schools to out suspected trans and nonbinary students to their parents.
The committee was also scheduled to hear S.B. 770, another “Parents’ Bill of Rights” measure that included a ban on transgender girls participating in school-sponsored girls’ athletic teams. The hearing on S.B. 770 was canceled, however.
Meanwhile, in a nine-hour hearing, the state’s House Emerging Issues Committee took up seven separate anti-trans measures.
Two bills sponsored by Missouri state Rep. Brad Hudson (R) target access to gender-affirming healthcare. H.B. 1519 would allow healthcare professionals—including, as Reed noted, pharmacists, desk workers, and nurses—to refuse to treat trans people receiving gender-affirming care. During public testimony, opponents of the bill noted that it would not only legalize discrimination but could also result in cisgender, nonbinary, and intersex people being denied medication by providers who mistakenly assume they are trying to access gender-affirming treatment.
This witness talks about how the same medications given to them (they didn't give pronouns, genderfluid) for their transition are the same ones given to cis men for hair loss, talks about the hatred the laws create. pic.twitter.com/3EH1eS9MLm
Hudson’s H.B. 1520, meanwhile, aims to strengthen and extend Missouri’s “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.” Signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) last June, the law banned all gender-affirming care for minors but included an exception for trans young people who are already receiving such care, as well as a sunset provision, causing the law to expire in August 2027. H.B. 1520 would remove those provisions, forcing trans minors who are currently receiving gender-affirming care to detransition and extending the law beyond the 2027 expiration date.
State Rep. Ashley Aune (D) noted that the sunset provision was included in the SAFE Act so that lawmakers could assess the law’s “unintended consequences.” Hudson responded that there is already “enough evidence out there” and that he knows “these drugs are not good for kids.”
In fact, every major American medical association has acknowledged that gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, is evidence-based, safe, and effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.
The committee also heard testimony on four bills aimed at banning transgender Missourians from using bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity. Proponents of such laws almost universally focus, without evidence, on the supposed threat transgender women pose to cis women in public restrooms. But during Wednesday’s hearing, opponents noted that, far from alleviating any discomfort, the bills would force masculine-presenting trans men to use women’s restrooms and also endanger trans women forced to use men’s facilities while doing nothing to prevent actual predators from accessing women’s bathrooms.
"Did you get this language from the Heritage foundation?"
Also, if you force trans men into women's bathrooms, you force people like this into women's bathrooms. A person could just as easily, if they want to use the "Wrong bathroom," claim they are a trans man if this bill passes. pic.twitter.com/sMBhYtFXg9
Rep Aune: "In a situation where you are in public, if a law went into place that required you to use the restroom as defined in this bill, would that leave you using women's restrooms?"
Additionally, one of the bathroom bills introduced by state Rep. Adam Schnelting (R), H.B. 2308, would legally define the terms “male” and “female” according to a person’s reproductive biology.
Similarly, H.B. 2309, also introduced by Schnelting, aims to legally redefine “gender” as synonymous with biological sex. According to Reed, the bill would end any legal recognition of transgender people in the state and would likely affect the gender markers on their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other forms of ID.
Schnelting testified that his bills would affect “bathrooms, dorms, shelters, everything” and might even “nullify sex-specific scholarships” given to trans individuals.
Democrats on the committee blasted their Republican colleagues’ seemingly single-minded focus on limiting the rights of transgender Missourians. State Rep. David Tyson Smith (D), who noted that Republicans make up 40 percent of his constituents, argued that people want lawmakers to address “inflation, grocery store prices.”
“People are wondering why we are spending time on this,” Smith said.
State Rep. Doug Mann (D) sounded an even more urgent alarm. “When it became no longer acceptable to be anti-gay in public, people moved to being anti-trans,” he said. “When you start to attack an already vulnerable group of people, you do not stop with that already vulnerable group of people.”
“I’m going to be honest, I do not trust that this is the end,” Mann said of the anti-trans bills. “Everything I have seen as a student of history, as a student from politics, as a student of government, tells me that it is going to go farther. Things are going to get worse, not better.”
The right lives on hate, racism, and bigotry. They can not allow other religions, minorities, people different from them to have the same rights and opportunities. For some reason they feel that others having the same rights they have makes them less than, makes them lessor as people. They take no joy in the happiness and success of others. They hate the inclusion of anyone slightly different from them, and they react with temper tantrums. Look at the meanness towards and smug superiority they think they have over others. Instead of admiring the skill of the flight crew, the pilots and the plane stewards that saved lives, these people mock and slur others. Hugs. Scottie
They’re blaming airline safety issues on disabled people, Black people, women, and drag queens to gin up anti-diversity sentiment.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
Conservatives are angry that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been, for at least a decade, trying to expand the diversity of its workforce, and they’re blaming gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
A terrifying video of a door blowing off Alaska Airlines flight 1282 went viral earlier this month. No one died, but the Boeing 737 Max 9 was forced to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. Some loose bolts around doors were found when other planes of the same type were later inspected.
She didn’t hesitate to launch homophobic attacks on the out Transportation Secretary and his husband, but now that she wants some of that cash for her district, she’s trying to play nice.
“The FAA is the latest victim of the radical [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on social media this week. “Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with ‘severe intellectual disabilities.’ How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being hired based on DEI rather than qualifications for the position?”
DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” workplace policies that seek to hire and support candidates from diverse backgrounds. Right-wingers have increasingly targeted these policies as a “woke” form of “identity politics” while ignoring the workplace disparities that they seek to address.
The FAA is the latest victim of the radical DEI agenda.
Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with 'severe intellectual disabilities.'
How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being…
Boebert was likely referring to a story that spread like wildfire on conservative media. The conservative New York Post ran a story about the FAA policy – which the Post stressed is “overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation” – with the headline, “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities.”
The story noted that the FAA has a diversity statement on its site that says it recruits people with disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”
X CEO Elon Musk shared the Post’s story and wrote: “Just had a conversation with some smart people could not believe this is happening.” He also shared a post that claimed that Black airline employees lower the “average IQ of US Air Force pilots.”
The problem with their explanation? The policy has been on the FAA since at least 2013, during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration didn’t do anything to remove it. The Post’s story didn’t mention the fact that the policy is from 2013 and instead just noted that the FAA’s website was updated in 2022, which isn’t a relevant fact to the story but may have been intended to imply that the policy was put in place during Buttigieg’s tenure.
“The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions,” the FAA said in a statement. The FAA has 45,000 employees. “Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that, of course, will vary by position.”
Snopes noted that the rightwing “media coverage provided no evidence linking any DEI initiative with the Alaska Airlines incident” and that the investigation into the Alaska Airlines flight is still ongoing.
But disabled and Black people aren’t the only group that conservatives are blaming for the incident. Hate influencer and former realtor Chaya Raichik – whose Libs of TikTok account has been massively influential in spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and has led to hospitals getting bomb threats and queer and trans teachers getting death threats – decided it was women’s fault.
That’s because Southwest Airlines made an innocuous post about an all-women flight crew shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident.
“All female flight crew? Go off, queens!” the Southwest Airlines’s X post read. The post included a picture of six smiling women in a plane.
“They’re openly mocking us,” Raichik wrote, sharing the post. “They know what they’re doing.” The implication was that supporting women in the workplace was somehow inappropriate following the incident in the Alaska Airlines flight.
Her post was viewed around 300,000 times and widely shared on the platform. Southwest later deleted their post celebrating the women.
Later in the week, Raichik raged at United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby doing drag at a Halloween party in 2011. Kirby is married to a woman and has seven children with her, but being a stereotypically masculine, straight, cisgender white man wasn’t enough to protect him from the right’s grievances about diversity in the workforce.
“This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of United. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into United,” Raichik wrote. “This video should tell you everything you need to know.”
This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into @united.
Anti-trans activist and fifth-place swimmer Riley Gaines responded to the video, writing, “It’s time to bring back shame.” She also wrote that people “fly United at your own risk,” not explaining exactly how she connected the video to flight safety.
Cisgender, heterosexual white men on the right have donned drag in the past without controversy, including Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) boyfriend, rightwing media personality Brian Glenn. Greene, who has protested drag queen shows in the past, laughed off claims that there was anything inappropriate about her boyfriend doing drag because it happened “years ago.” The same grace, though, apparently doesn’t apply to CEOs of airlines that support diversity in the workplace.
Buttigieg, for his part, assured travelers that he has confidence in the FAA’s ability to keep flights safe, noting that they grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 jets for further inspection following the Alaska Airlines incident. He explained that FAA staff is putting in extra hours to get to the root of the problem.
“I have confidence in any aircraft cleared by the FAA,” he told reporters last week. “The FAA’s doing a great job and [FAA Administrator] Mike Whitaker’s doing a great job.”
He added that, as a father, the images of the plane with the door blown out affected him.
“Anybody looking at those pictures has to be thinking about what you’d do in that situation,” he said, explaining that he was just on a flight with one of his children. “That is what’s on our mind.”
Notice that the gay couple were there first. But you know how tolerant and easy to get along with maga Christians are … only if they get their own way all the time. Otherwise they are violent self entitled gang thugs who can not be talked to, reasoned with, coexisted with. Look how tolerant these people are of LGBTQIA kids and people who are a different non-white skin tone, that is how they want communities and businesses to be run also, totally intolerant and aggressively unaccepting demands they be removed from the public. Hugs. Scottie.
A slew of dirty tricks marked the MAGA family’s reign of terror, and the couple couldn’t take it anymore.
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures
Gay restaurant owners William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding have hung up their aprons.
The longtime married couple have sold the restaurant they founded several years ago, the Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VA. The new owner will change the name and try to make a fresh start with the restaurant’s combative Christian and MAGA-loving neighbors, Mike and Melissa Washer, who did their best to drive the gays next door out of business — and succeeded.
They’re trying to get their gay neighbors’ restaurant closed by any means possible.
“In the end, the decision was easier to make than I expected,” Waybourn told The Washington Post, which detailed the years-long feud — instigated by the Washers not long after they moved into the neighboring property — last July.
News of the Christian couple’s dirty tricks and clinical obsession with making their neighbors’ lives miserable brought Waybourne and his husband support from around the world.
“On some level, I know I am disappointing many people, especially those who have stood by us these past three years, many of whom I have never met from places I’ve never heard of,” Waybourn explained.
But he said he knows that for his own health and well-being, and for his adopted town’s, he needed to step away from the toxic environment that the MAGA-loving Washers had created.
For the longtime gay rights activist, who proudly flew a rainbow flag from the restaurant’s porch since it opened, there was no compromising with people who planted a rat by his back door and then shared a picture of it with the local health department. Incessant complaints over garbage, deliveries, parking, noise, Covid mandates, permitting, no-trespassing orders on both sides, and a lawsuit followed.
Restaurant employees reported Mike Washer had called the owners “f****ts”.
The Washers were MAGA bullies, and there was no stopping them.
Last summer, Waybourn was knocked back with a mild stroke, revealing the toll the Washers’ campaign was exacting.
For a few months after that, things quieted down.
But in November, after the Washers’ son was elected to the Board of Supervisors, a fresh round of harassment came The Front Porch’s way. The restaurant’s so-called Christian MAGA oppressors were relentless.
“My presence became so personal with the Washers that removing myself would give the new owner and the restaurant a fresh start,” Waybourn concluded.
The couple sold the Front Porch at the end of December.
Waybourn describes the restaurant’s new owner, chef and restaurateur Shawn Malone, as “very laid-back.”
Malone has a five-year lease on the building from Waybourn and Spaulding, with an option to buy. Plans are for the new business to open in February under the name Bistro at the Porch.
Waybourn hopes Malone can set the restaurant — and the relationship with his neighbors — on a new course. “I don’t think he’s going to personalize the Washers’ antics as much as I have.”
“I just can’t continue to have the emotional turmoil of owning a business that I can’t enjoy,” Waybourn said.
Thankfully President Biden is still able to enjoy the progressive advances in society. His republican right wing critics are against any advances in society since the 1940s / 1950s. The majority of the country wants to move forward with equality and acceptance of differences, and a small vocal violent minority wants to rule over every aspect of others peoples lives. That fraction demands that others live by the same restrictions, same hates, and do only what they do. Most base their belief in how others must be forced to live in the land of the free by their religious beliefs, regardless of what the other person believes. This small fraction of the public wants the right to have complete control over their own children and yours, denying other parents that right to raise their children progressively in a way. Hugs. Scottie
Trans teenage boys are just as likely to get pregnant as cisgender girls, but sex-ed programs don’t speak to them.
The Biden administration is dedicating approximately $700,000 to a sexual health program aimed at pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.
The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, which will spearhead a program focused on sex education and condom usage for trans boys.
It’s not the first time the high court have allowed trans students to pee in peace.
The grant summary explains that trans boys are “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable.”
It also said trans youth who were assigned female at birth “may be less likely to use condoms when having sex with people who have penises and are at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant.” The organization plans to try out a texting strategy originally designed for cisgender teenage girls who are sexual minorities. It will also hold focus groups to learn more about the sex lives of trans boys.
The Biden administration has been investing in other trans health programs as well. In 2022, it granted $1 million to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to study thrombosis risks in trans youth undergoing hormone therapy, according toShore News Network.
Despite the relatively small grant allocated for the sexual health program, the right is outraged that any funds would be appropriated to help trans youth. Conservative media blasted the program as “woke” and “radical” and mocked the fact that it is indeed possible for boys to get pregnant.
President Biden has been the most vocal president in history in support of trans rights. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting a trans inmate seeking gender-affirming care. The administration has also participated in multiple lawsuits against states seeking to ban gender-affirming care.
Bigots are everywhere, and it’s important to take the chance to laugh at them when we can. Ashley Gavin has a good laugh at a terrible pastor. Miranda Scholl breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
This goes along with my last post, Christian take over of the US pushed by Churches, leaders with money, and wealthy older people who see it as a way to enforce their bigotry to remain a white cis straight 1950s society. I really want to emphasize the hard right bigotry and hate these billionaires have and the changes they are making to society. They fund the very rabid right wing media that is trying hard to change all of our society and political leanings, increasing hate for LGBTQIA and hate against blacks / brown people. They push a pro Christian white cis straight male in charge of society. Dunn & Wilks also control influential legal, policy, & advocacy organizations. One of those orgs argued in court that pharmacies shouldn’t sell birth control. The lawyer who argued that case later became a federal judge. He banned the abortion pill. And they’ve even created their own right-wing media bubble. Dunn & Wilks fund Texas Scorecard, the top far-right publication. Wilks owns the Daily Wire and bankrolls PragerU, a right-wing “education” platform they’re trying to force into our schools. Prager U is now being used in red state public schools as instruction materials. Florida pushes their message hard. There is a serious push by really wealthy old Christian bigots to turn the US into a Christian Iran, a Christian Saudi Arabia, a Christian Afghanistan. Do we the poor majority want to allow this? Hugs. Scottie
For more than three months, Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi has vigorously attacked critics of Defend Texas Liberty, and rebuffed calls to distance the state party from the powerful group over its ties to white supremacists. As he did so, Rinaldi was also working as an attorney for one of the group’s two billionaire funders, Farris Wilks, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Since 2021, Wilks has given nearly $5 million to Defend Texas Liberty, which last year was the state party’s largest financial supporter. With Rinaldi’s help, the group has sought to purge the Texas GOP of more moderate voices by bankrolling far-right causes and primary candidates. Publicly, Rinaldi has also been silent about Defend Texas Liberty as the Tribune extensively reported on ties between the group and other white supremacists and Nick Fuentes acolytes.
Read the full article. There’s much more. Give the tweets below a minute to fully load because they illuminate how deep this goes. The final tweet links to a grimly fascinating deep dive into Defend Texas Liberty’s leader.
Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi backed a group with white supremacist ties — while working for its billionaire funder https://t.co/2h63antXz5
These two billionaire-pastors are spending their fortune enacting an extreme Christian nationalist worldview in the second-largest state in the country.
In his teens and his 20s, Jonathan Stickland was a prolific internet troll.
He later made a career of it — ascending to the role of a conservative Texas powerbroker, before taking heat for hosting a meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. https://t.co/vvMwzjDh22
Y’know that old saw that goes, “If you enter a room and there are 12 Nazis having dinner at the table and you sit down to join them, there are now 13 Nazis at the table”?
Rinaldi, Dunn, Wilks, Strickland and the rest of these guys are the ones who catered the meal.
Two billionaires funding right wing hate groups and Nazis. And both are pastors.
Who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then it is for a Richmond to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Who said the greatest commandment after loving God was loving your neighbor?
Who said not to store up treasures on earth?
no one of any importance whatsoever to modern fundamentalist Christianity. One could almost wish that they succeed turning Texas into a theocracy and the right wing state. Maybe they can leave the union.
I think it reveals that they don’t even believe their religious nuttery. They just want to use superstition and money to control EVERYTHING, and they also think they’re so smart that no one will pick up on the hypocrisy
Actually, they are heretic “Christians”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… Wilks’ parents founded their own church (cult?), which denies Christian doctrines like the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, and gives primacy to the Hebrew Scriptures. While they seem to recognize Jesus as a prophet of some sort, they don’t seem to be bound to follow his teachings.
And look! Wilks is the pastor of his own church cult. Currently the Assembly of Yahweh (7th day) is a conservative Jews for Jesus-type congregation. It teaches that “the true religion is Jewish (not a Gentile religion)” and its members celebrate the Old Testament holidays rather than those related to the New Testament. The congregation considers the Old Testament historically and scientifically accurate.
One minority group using keywords to promote a crisis that doesn’t exist to remove books with characters and plots they don’t like. One minority group pushing for the right to control the children of the majority who disagree with them. One of the board members claimed it was up to the parents to decide what was sexual explicit not educators, yet he also claimed that he wouldn’t tolerate tax money to be spent on what he called sexually explicit books, which we all know he means books with LGBTQIA characters or plots. So he is taking the rights from the parents he just claimed had the rights to make that judgement. Hugs. Scottie
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process.
Whether it’s a textbook or a library book, it won’t be allowed in Carroll County Public Schools if deemed sexually explicit by school officials. That’s thanks to a new policy passed unanimously by its school board Wednesday.
The vote came after a monthslong campaign by the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, whose members challenged dozens of school library books they say are inappropriate for students.
The board decided in the fall that staff should tighten the policy on textbook and library book selection and tasked them with creating a definition of “sexually explicit.”
“Instructional materials, including supplemental materials, shall not contain sexually explicit content,” the new policy states. “Sexually explicit content is defined as unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner.”
The policy doesn’t apply to materials used in the health curriculum.
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process. She said it’s because reviewing such a high volume of books would take too long. And school officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.
Kathryn Berling, a parent and school librarian at Taneytown Elementary School, told board members that they nor the school system asked for librarians’ input on the books. While she spoke, a handful of attendees stood with her in solidarity.
Berling noted that librarians were not asked for input when the superintendent took away the books, nor on a new policy put in place at the beginning of the year that requires librarians to complete a time-consuming checklist policing a book’s content before selecting for the library.
The board also, she noted, did not ask librarians about defining “sexually explicit.”
“It’s a shame you cannot trust the professionalism of our CCPS media specialists,” Berling said.
Shortly before Wednesday’s vote, a few board members questioned how staff defined “sexually explicit” in the policy proposal. Sahithya Sudhakar, the student member, said she doesn’t think the definition suffices because graphic content can look different to different people. It’s a risk to content like literature that students read in class, she added.
“I’m worried we’re losing important content in our schools because a single line is taken out of context,” said Sudhakar, who does not have voting rights.
Fellow members Tara Battaglia and Patricia Dorsey, who ended up voting for the policy, echoed her concerns on the definition and asked if there was more they can do to make it less subjective.
But members Steve Whisler and Donna Sivigny saw no issue. Whisler said as an elected official he won’t tolerate any tax dollars spent on “sexually explicit” books.
“It is the job of parents, not educators … to determine what’s sexually explicit,” he said.
“We are treating adults like children, and children like adults.” -Tiffany Justice @4TiffanyJustice The material that 13yo’s have access to in schools should be very different that the content adults enjoy. We need to stop treating children like adults. pic.twitter.com/CAmLdDWqkL
— Kit Hart, American Girl (@5sweetharts_) July 13, 2023
The crisis was strategically created in order to gain control. By isolating children for years, forcing them to cover their faces, they hurt children.
By convincing children that they were born in the wrong bodies, and that the only way to fix them was with drugs and surgeries,… pic.twitter.com/tZ8vNQAUDY
And when you advocate for a better world, you become comfortable- and even embrace – controversy. Read my full commentary here. ⬇️ @Moms4Libertyhttps://t.co/5IqQhDWVfV
[Board member] Whisler said… “It is the job of parents, not educators… to determine what’s sexually explicit.”
Then why the fuck did he argue and vote for a policy that makes it the educators and school librarians responsibility to police the board‘s definition? Whisler’s just an anti-sex control freak.
I was reading books from the adult section of our libraries when I was in 7th grade. I came across depictions of sex acts. Somehow I survived. Thank God. /s
By third grade I was reading at the 12th grade level. Mostly science fiction but many biographies and other non-fiction. I was exposed to many words and terms and descriptions of things that I didn’t completely understand, but the help of the dictionary and my extremely well-read father, I quickly learned. My parents never treated me like a little kid when it came to my choices of reading materials, and I wasn’t in any way traumatized by anything I read in books.
By age 12, I was allowed to go off on my bike, alone or with friends, and frequently would be gone 8 to 10 hours on the weekends. Sometimes we’d be riding clear across town [Columbus, OH] or far out past the suburbs, going almost to Delaware, Grove City, Reynoldsburg and others. I was also allowed to go play down by the river behind the shopping center, where, in retrospect, one might even encounter somewhat shifty characters. I never got kidnapped, raped, assaulted or killed, or exposed to drugs or cigarettes. Most of those things happened at my school. I turned out ok, well-rounded, able to discern right from wrong, to make responsible decisions and other positive attributes.
hell, I was reading from the adult section of the library when I was in grade school. if I could read it, my parents let me and my dad would answer any questions I had about things. they were just happy I was reading. I remember seeing book about cattle breeds around the world and there was a photo showing the weinies of African tribal members, I loved that book!!! LOL
Christian privilege at it again. “[S]chool officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.” But it’s not a constitutional issue to ban speech unless it’s religious (Evangelical Christian). These assholes believe they’re both divinely and constitutionality sanctioned to dominate the rest of us.
The buy-bull….Talk about a book full of filth, violence and lies! No one should be exposed to it until old enough to realize is a work of fiction created by sun baked brains and changed over the centuries by crazies, drunks, and the power hungry.
“School officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.”
School officials were wrong. Applying a general law or policy without distinction and without bias against a religion is clearly constitutional. Also, the Bible is neither a textbook nor supplemental instructional material, so it’s presence is superfluous, already.
I guess it’s not within their definition of “sexually explicit” because it’s language is too ambiguous and lacking in detail when it describes sex acts with prostitutes, sisters, half-sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters, fathers, kings, concubines, refugees, war captives, under-age girls, slaves, maids, surrogates, men, donkeys, dogs, and goats.
As a voracious young reader, I had pretty much checked out everything in the kids section of our public library by age 10 and moved into the adult stacks.The librarians panicked the first time I brought a stack of Agatha Christie and John Creasey mysteries to the check out desk and refused to let me have them without parental permission. Infuriated, I ran to get my mom. She rolled her eyes and just said, “Let him read them”.
Until puberty hit, I skimmed over the sexy bits, then had an “a-ha” moment when I finally connected the naughty descriptions in the books with my own naughty bits. I think the only significant affect it had on me was using a lot of British sex slang until the 7th grade librarian asked me if I knew what “twat” actually meant.
P.S. The librarian became a lifelong friend. RIP Mrs. Pavitt.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures
Photo: Shutterstock
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Scottie's Playtime 